Text |Jin Wei.
Due to the year-end sprint in December last year, most car companies' delivery results in January this year have declined month-on-month, but there are also AITO questions about the 35% month-on-month increase.
Among them, Zhiji Automobile, one of the "six dragons" with sales exceeding 10,000 for the first time at the end of last year, saw a month-on-month halving. In January 2024, Zhiji Auto delivered 5,305 new vehicles in a single month, a 49% decline from the previous month.
In January, the number of new deliveries of the LS6 was 4,766 units, a 51% decline from the previous month75%。
In December 2023, the monthly retail sales of Zhiji Auto exceeded 10,412 units, exceeding 10,000 units for the first time. Among them, the monthly retail sales of the Zhiji LS6 in the domestic auto market were 9,878 units. The Zhiji LS6 was launched and delivered in mid-October last year, and due to the high configuration, the market feedback has been good since the launch of the Zhiji LS6.
Liu Tao, CEO of Zhiji Automobile, revealed in an interview that the target for 2024 will be set at 12-130,000 units. The average monthly sales volume required to achieve the target is 1-1080,000 units, the required year-on-year growth was 21332%-239.43%。
However, at the beginning of the new year, sales suffered a month-on-month cliff decline, casting a shadow on the annual sales of Zhiji Automobile.
As a second-generation brand, SAIC's Zhiji Automobile, FAW's Hongqi New Energy, Dongfeng Group's VOYAH Automobile, Changan's AVATAR, BAIC's Jihu, and GAC's Haobo are known as the "six tigers" of the six major domestic automobile groups, and the "six tigers" in the automotive industry will grow in volume by the end of 2023, which will change the competition pattern of the high-end new energy vehicle market to a certain extent.
But since January this year, Zhiji Auto has suddenly encountered a series of turmoil.
A number of users of Zhiji LS6 generally reported that there was no prompt sound for radar and steering, and some users also collided and scraped with others because of this. Subsequently, Zhiji Auto was exposed to large-scale car machine failures, which were manifested in problems such as the screen not showing the speed and gear, and the reversing radar without sound, which caused a large number of complaints from car owners, and the complaints involved platforms such as Chedi, Xiaohongshu and Black Cat Complaints.
The customer service of Zhiji Auto reported to the owner that this is a fault of the car machine system, but because during the New Year's Day, the engineers may not respond in time and cannot solve it temporarily.
On January 3, Zhiji Auto issued an apology statement, saying that it had paid close attention to the lack of screen display information and reversing prompt sound in the vehicles of some users. After investigation, it was due to a timestamp conflict problem in the PDC (Reversing Radar) prompt renderer integrated by IMOS, which led to the problem that some vehicles had a missing reversing prompt after 20:00 on December 31, 2023. At the same time, for some vehicles that have not been upgraded to the latest version by the end of November 2023, there will be a problem of missing screen display information.
On the same day, Li Weimeng, Executive Director of Zhiji Software and User Multi-Touchpoint, apologized on Weibo: "As the person in charge of IMOS, I have an unshirkable responsibility, and I have been busy with the repair of software versions and the push of OTAs in the past few days, and I have not been able to communicate with you at the first time. Just now, the OTA push of the full fixed version has been completed. ”
Subsequently, Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, ** the Weibo, and said that "I remember the experience and lessons, and apologize again".
As for the measures, Zhiji Auto said that the company has completed the repair of the relevant issues and launched IMOS2 on January 26.The OTA (over-the-air** technology) push and reminder for users of the 5th version of the patch pack, and the push to all users will be completed on January 3rd.
According to the data, Zhiji's IMOS car machine system was first launched at the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, which is an operating system independently developed based on the Linux kernel, and was once called "another Huawei's Hongmeng". In September 2023, Zhiji Auto underwent an OTA upgrade, providing nearly 500 functional upgrades and optimizations, which is also the 10th iteration of the version in 14 months since the release of Zhiji IMOS.
It is understood that the vehicle-machine system is equivalent to the soul of electric vehicles and is a very important part of the intelligent cockpit. At present, the competition of major new energy vehicle brands revolves around intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit. In the case of such "involution" in the industry, any small problem may affect the user's trust in the car company, and the locomotive accident has sounded the alarm for the intelligence of Zhiji Automobile.
Shortly before this incident, on December 27, 2023, nearly 700 owners of Zhiji LS7 jointly defended their rights, demanding that the problems existing in the vehicle be solved and the rights and interests of the owners be protected. In addition, on February 4, China Quality News Network reported that it received complaints from a number of Zhiji car owners that the newly purchased LS7 model has a low-frequency resonance phenomenon during the driving process, and causes ear pressure reaction, which seriously affects the mood of the car and driving safety.
Zhiji Automobile, jointly built by SAIC, Alibaba, and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, can be said to have been born with a golden key. Within SAIC, Zhiji Auto is known as the "No. 1 Project", and SAIC Motor hopes to make it "China's Tesla".
Surrounded by the halo, in August 2022, Zhiji Auto completed Series A financing, and the valuation of Zhiji Auto reached nearly 30 billion yuan after the financing was completed.
In June 2022, Zhiji Auto launched the L7 at a price of 33880,000-57880,000 yuan, entering the 400,000-level luxury car market. In June 2022, deliveries of the Zhiji L7 began, and the annual sales volume finally reached 5,000 units. For a new brand, this is not too bad.
In February 2023, Zhiji Auto's second LS7 was officially launched, targeting the pure electric market of more than 300,000 yuan, with a price of up to 30980,000 yuan—45980,000 yuan, but unfortunately the sales are not good, even if Zhiji launched 28The new model of 980,000 yuan has not been able to recover the decline. From March to June 2023, the sales volume of Zhiji LS7 has never exceeded 2,000 units, and then it has been around 500 units.
On October 12, 2023, Zhiji Auto's third model, the LS6, was launched, positioned as a large and medium-sized pure electric SUV, with high-speed elevated and urban NOA intelligent driving capabilities.
However, Zhiji LS6 staged a ** "big dive", from 400,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, with a price of 2149-27.690,000 yuan, when announcing the sales volume in December 2023, Zhiji Automobile deliberately described Zhiji LS6 as "the first Chinese brand in monthly sales of all categories of pure electric vehicles with more than 200,000 yuan", which has a certain cost performance and competitive advantage.
It is with this new car that in December, Zhiji Automobile achieved a counterattack, and its sales volume exceeded 10,000 for the first time, of which Zhiji LS6 contributed 90%, becoming a temporary hit.
In 2023, the annual sales volume of Zhiji Automobile will be about 3820,000 units, not completing the 4The sales target is 50,000 units, while the annual sales of Zeekr and VOYAH, which are also "second generation", are 120,000 and 50,000 respectively.
In 2023, SAIC Motor proposed a three-year action plan for the development of new energy vehicles, setting an annual sales target of 3.5 million new energy vehicles in 2025. At the beginning of January this year, SAIC Motor released a production and sales express report showing that the company will sell 502 cars in 2023090,000 units, down 5 percent year-on-year31%, in terms of new energy, in 2023, SAIC Motor will sell 112 new energy vehicles30,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 461%, ranking second among Chinese automakers in terms of sales.
As SAIC's high-end electric brand, Zhiji Automobile will take on the task of sales.
In order to open up sales, on the evening of January 23, Zhiji Automobile announced that from now until February 5, it will send users the most advanced value of more than 470,000 yuan of Zhiji LS6 Dragon Year New Year car purchase rights. Under this policy, the price of the Zhiji LS6 has also been changed to 21790,000 27990,000 yuan.
Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, once said in an interview: "The pricing of Zhiji LS6 has made a lot of determination within the company, and it has indeed lost a considerable part of the gross profit, which sounds like a table-lifting, but if a car company wants to participate in market competition and stay on the table, it is more important to maintain product and brand popularity." ”
It is worth noting that the starting price of Zhiji LS6 has been continuously lowered, and Zhiji Automobile has almost completely covered the 200,000-300,000 yuan ** range of Feifan Automobile, another new electric brand under SAIC Group, and the internal friction pressure of "competing with the same door" has increased sharply. At present, the starting price of Feifan Auto's products has dropped to less than 200,000 yuan, and Feifan's intelligent driving team (SAIC PP-CEM team) has also reported personnel adjustments.
Zhiji Automobile, on the one hand, faces competition from the outside world, and at the same time, there is an embarrassment of "competing with Feifan Automobile". How to solve this problem remains to be verified by time.
If you have any thoughts on Zhiji Auto, please leave a message below.